I’m glad to hear that. My impression is colored negatively because I associated TV evangelism with 19th century snake-oil salesmen on the frontier who would latch onto revival camps to sell their wares – and some were preachers. That was more PT Barnum / Thomas Edison era though.
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Growing up, they were called “scary Christians”.
I’d see the televangelists on TV: The Bakkers, Copeland, Roberts, now and again. Not a whole show but a few minutes.
And the whole while I’d think, “I wonder how much they pay them to sit there and respond and do all the stuff they do in the audience?”
Seriously. I thought it was a paid production because everybody played their parts PERFECTLY.
Entertaining. Never for a moment did I believe anybody BELIEVED any of it.
It was in the same category as Weekly World News, National Inquirer, NY Post.
But then in the early 1990s, I met a few “scary Christians”. And they were just what all the stereotypes said. I was in disbelief even still.
But it was Rush Limbaugh. A boss who hated Rush Limbaugh played him on the radio every day – 1993 / 1994 area — so he could scream at the radio.
Old Catholic Italian in his late 70s. Believed abortion was none of his business because he didn’t have a uterus.
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Baha’i was one of my first escapades out of the church I grew up in – mid 1980s. It’s not really Christian, more humanist – but very similar to the Methodist I was raised in in that good works was a significant part of what’s important.
Similarly with Unitarian Universalist. Very rational and logical, acceptance. It was lacking a solid center, but I know I could always go no matter my condition.
but looking for solid and historical, I ended up with Eastern Orthodox for a bunch of years. That had the meat of theology. Very solid in that department. But their human political side is just as awful as what I see in American christianity.
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Quaker is probably where I belong though. Only ever went to a few meetings but I suspect it suits me best should I ever do questing again
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